It’s earnings season and you never know what you are going to. INTC saved the market today with well-received second quarter earnings report. As a result the NASDAQ rallied 3.5% and the S&P took 3%.

There was a nasty gap up, which I believe will eventually be filled. In fact, had that gap up had not occurred (look at the Nasdaq Chart), I would have been much more optimistic on the ability of the market to move much higher, but it smells and looks like an exhaustion gap, that often occurs at the tail-end of a prolonged rally, and signals a pending reversal in price action.

I may be wrong, and it happens quite a bit, as it may very well break previous highs from June, but I’m going to have to see it before I believe it.

On another front, got into INTC on the solid earnings news, but did hardly nothing for me. While there was an opportunity to take a nice hefty gain of $300+ at one point, I continued to ride the stock and got out with on a meager $78 or a .05 gain. Both INTC and QQQQ provided excellent setups at the same time. I didn’t want to trade both of them on the same type of setup so I took INTC on the theory that it provided a higher risk, but a much greater potential reward. I was wrong and after the early morning strength, the stock pretty much churned sideways the rest of the day, while QQQQ stepped up nicely and into the close for an easy 1R+ gain potential.

Here’s theNASDAQ and S&P Charts…

nasd71509

sp71509

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